GENERAL REMARKS. 
301 
sovereign under whose orders Sir John Franklin sailed, 
and the prince her consort. They are similar in their 
features to those of Spitzbergen; and, though I -am 
aware how easy it is to be deceived in our judgment of 
distant heights, I am satisfied from the estimate of Mr. 
Morton, as well as from our measurements of the same 
range farther to the south, that they equal them in 
elevation, 2500 feet. 
Two large indentations broke in upon the uniform 
margin of the coast. Everywhere else the spinal ridge 
seemed unbroken. Mr. Morton saw no ice. 
It will be seen by the abstract of our “ field-notes” 
in the Appendix, as well as by an analysis of the 
results which I have here rendered nearly in the very 
words of Mr. Morton, that, after travelling due north 
over a solid area choked with bergs and frozen fields, 
he was startled by the growing weakness of the ice: 
its surface became rotten, and the snow wet and pulpy. 
His dogs, seized with terror, refused to advance. Then 
for the first time the fact broke upon him, that a long 
dark band seen to the north beyond a protruding cape 
—Cape Andrew Jackson—was water. With danger 
and difficulty he retraced his steps, and, reaching sound 
ice, made good his landing on a new coast. 
The journeys which I had made myself, and those 
of my different parties, had shown that an unbroken 
surface of ice covered the entire sea to the east, west, 
and south. From the southernmost ice, seen by Dr. 
Hayes only a few weeks before, to the region of this 
